28 Established 1961 Sunday, January 7, 2018 Lifestyle Movies Globes newcomer Golden Globes celebrate Timothee Chalamet the year of the genre movie shoots for the stars irtually unknown a year ago, Timothee Chalamet is the very definition of a break- n a year of devastating hurricanes, ubiquitous sex out star, featuring in two of 2017’s hottest assault scandals and a strikingly candid presidential V movies and vying Sunday for a Golden Globe. ITwitter account, it is little wonder that cinemagoers are The 22-year-old New Yorker has been showered turning to escapist fantasy. With fairy tale romance “The with acclaim and awards nominations for his star- Shape of Water” leading the nominations for the Golden ring role in Luca Guadagnino’s paean to the uni- Globes, dark farce “Get Out” topping critics’ lists and versal heartbreak of first love, “Call Me by Your horror movies making $1 billion at the box office, 2017 Name.” Chalamet-who embodies the Socratic may come to be seen as the year of the genre movie. ideal of youthful, unsullied beauty with his brown Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” which satirizes suburban curls, porcelain cheekbones and coquettish green white guilt over racial inequality in the United States, is eyes-has charmed critics with his performance as emblematic of the rise of genre films in this year’s awards precocious, sensitive teenager Elio. season. It has been almost a year since its release, and The teen, a bored 17-year-old American who most movies brought out that far ahead of Hollywood’s must spend summer in rural northern Italy, various prize-giving ceremonies are long forgotten by the becomes transfixed by Oliver (Armie Hammer), time the trophies are being polished. Yet “Get Out” is up the handsome graduate student who has come to for two Globes on Sunday and entertainment website work with Elio’s professor father. In the latest of Eonline.com has been extolling its virtues as a genuine his numerous awards for the part, Chalamet won contender. the rising star trophy alongside co-honoree Gal Gadot at the Palm Springs film festival in California on Tuesday. Vying for “It’s truly an awesome feeling to get to be in the rising stars category tonight alongside Gal Gadot. Gal, your film has literally made 250 times Globes more money than my movie has,” the self-effac- ing star said. He thanked Hammer for his “big brotherhood” before turning to his friend’s wife Elizabeth Chambers with a cheeky smile and Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water,” a hot (L-R) Golden Globe Ambassador Simone Garcia Johnson, President of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Meher thanking her for “letting me crawl all over your favorite among the movies vying for the best dramatic film husband for two months.” Globe, has seven nominations in total. The Cold War-era Tatna, Host Seth Meyers, CEO of Dick Clark Productions and Executive Producer Allen Shapiro, EVP of Television for piece tells the story of a young, mute woman (Sally Dick Clark Productions and Executive Producer Barry Adelman and Mayor of Beverly Hills Lili Bosse roll out the red carpet during the 75th Annual Golden Globe Awards Preview Day. Hard to ignore Hawkins) who works at night in a government laboratory Chalamet said when the film was released in and falls in love with a captive merman-like amphibian late November that the role, for which he had to creature. Alexander Payne’s sci-fi satire “Downsizing” and nation of the nightmare that is our president and the lack winners of the 1920s and 1930s were high-end genre learn Italian, had “changed” him. Guadagnino is Edgar Wright’s heist thriller “Baby Driver” are also seen full of praise for his “sublime” young star. “He is as genre movies that would not normally get a second of any other major movies to come along to overshadow films, according to Jonathan Kuntz, a professor of film at it, ‘Get Out’ stands a really good chance at being the the University of California, Los Angeles. such a courageous and surprising actor... He is glance on awards nights, yet both are vying for Globes on always in the moment,” the director said. “Could Sunday. favorite this year.” The last decade or so have been unkind to genre While Peele’s film can be enjoyed as straightforward movies but they are on their way back, with frightening Timothee Chalamet pull off an upset at the horror, Stone argues that it steps outside the limits of films in particular regaining their mojo. The New York Golden Globes by winning best film drama actor Nightmare president for ‘Call Me by Your Name?’” wondered awards In recent years, the Hollywood Foreign Press genre because it works equally well as a “metaphor for Times magazine recently ran a cover story describing the horrors in our culture.” “The Shape of Water,” mean- 2017 as “The Year of Horror,” dedicating several of its prediction website Gold Derby. “Gary Oldman Association, which runs the Globes, has rewarded movies (‘Darkest Hour’) has been the presumptive celebrating Tinseltown (“La La Land,” “The Artist,” while, has been welcomed more generously than many inside pages to the best actors in recent examples of the fantasy movies because it comes from the mind of a mas- genre. The cover featured Australian Oscar winner Nicole Oscar-season frontrunner since before his film “Birdman”) or heartfelt rites-of-passage flicks was even released in November, but there are (“Boyhood,” “Moonlight”). Historical or journalistic stories ter, a director who has proved his skill at genre with the Kidman, one of the most popular actresses of her genera- triple Oscar-winning “Pan’s Labyrinth.” tion, who diversified this year with a starring part in the signs that he may be vulnerable.” like “The King’s Speech” and “Spotlight” are also firm Sacha Stone, of the Awards Daily website, said favorites-usually at the expense of more fantastical, gory creep-fest “The Killing of a Sacred Deer.” Bloodlust Noting that horror films have made more than $1 bil- Chalamet was in vogue not just because he’s in a escapist movies. At the genre end of the market, only beloved movie but also because people were westerns like “The Revenant” and “Hell or High Water” The genre movie hasn’t always been an endangered lion in ticket sales over 12 months, the magazine attributed species. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Jonathan Demme’s the movie going public’s new bloodlust to the torment of seeing him for the first time as a “charismatic and have been pulling their weight. good looking young star.” Add to the mix his var- Sasha Stone, of the Awards Daily website, says the cult thriller “The Silence of the Lambs,” Peter Jackson’s the daily news cycle. “Horror movies probably don’t need “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” and the world to be horrifying to be good,” it speculated. “But ious skills-he was already fluent in French due to arrival of Donald Trump at the White House can largely his family roots before taking on Italian, and explain why fantasy and horror have received more musical gangster comedy “Chicago” all won the best film when things are bad, the genre has a way of telling you Oscar. In the 1970s, chillers like “Jaws” and “Rosemary’s they could be worse.”—AFP plays piano and guitar in the movie-and you have attention than usual from audiences and prize juries. “In an actor with “the right balance of good looks a different kind of year, probably ‘Get Out’ wouldn’t be Baby” would be a fixture on the awards circuit. Go back further still, and it becomes apparent that the first Oscar and talent that make him hard to ignore,” added such a strong contender,” she said. “But with the combi- Stone.

Showbiz family Like 23-year-old “Baby Driver” actor Ansel Elgort, another rising star vying for Globes glory, Chalamet studied at the prestigious LaGuardia high school for the performing arts in New York. It was there that he met his one-time girlfriend Lourdes Leon-Madonna’s daughter. Chalamet comes from a family of artists, inheriting his per- forming chops from his mother, former Broadway dancer Nicole Flender, and his creative side from his grandfather, the screenwriter Harold Flender. His aunt is television producer and writer Amy Lippman and his older sister Pauline is a Paris- based actress. With a head start in the business, Chalamet already has a decade of work on his resume, including a role as the son of Matthew McConaughey’s space pilot in Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” (2014). He has also been a murder victim in the flagship detective series Preparations are underway at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California for the 75th Annual Golden Globes Awards. “Law and Order,” and a college student in “Homeland.” Had he missed out on “Call Me by Your Name,” 2017 would still have been a huge year, with roles in Scott Cooper’s brutal western “Hostiles” and Greta Gerwig’s awards season darling “Lady Bird” cementing his profile. The Golden Globes and Hollywood’s gender equality shame In “Lady Bird,” Chalamet steals the show as an edgy musician and all-around cad who starts up he 75th Golden Globes will present a man with the sources with knowledge of the issue argued that it would plus one Latina. Around half of the men on the list went a relationship with Saoirse Ronan’s Catholic award for best director for the 74th time on Sunday, be unfair to single out the organization for what was an on to work on another top-grossing movie during that schoolgirl. This year, he is due to star in Woody Tshutting women out of the race despite a bumper industry-wide issue. The Oscars rather make the point, decade, while more than 80 percent of the women Allen’s “Rainy Day in New York” opposite Elle year for female filmmakers. The last 12 months have seen with their even worse record of just four female best weren’t hired for a big film project again. Fanning, Jude Law and pop star Selena Gomez, Greta Gerwig make her solo directorial debut with the director nominees since 1927, including Bigelow, who and he also takes on the role of a drug addict in acclaimed “Lady Bird” while “Wonder Woman” director won in 2009 for “The Hurt Locker.” USC published an Why isn’t it 50-50? the drama “Beautiful Boy.”—AFP Patty Jenkins delivered the biggest female-made live- analysis on Thursday, co-authored by Smith, on more The ongoing USC study is updated every year, and action movie in history. than a decade of movies which also demonstrates that only eight women were added in 2017 — a sign, accord- Dee Rees’s Netflix racial drama “Mudbound” has a gender equality across the wider industry is practically ing to Smith, that little progress has been made. “As we near-perfect approval rating on reviews website Rotten non-existent. said last year, most female directors are ‘one and done’ Tomatoes, and Kathryn Bigelow made headlines world- The study-”Inclusion in the Director’s Chair?”-com- when it comes to helming popular films, particularly wide with the gut-wrenching 1960s crime drama bines data on the gender, race and age of 1,223 filmmak- women from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups,” “Detroit.” Throw in Sofia Coppola, Amma Asante and ers working on 1,100 top-grossing films released from said Smith. “In 2017, none of the women entering the Valerie Faris, all of whom made much-admired movies 2007 to 2017. Just four percent were female, and among ranks of 100 top film directors appeared in our study last year, and it begins to look decidedly odd that the those there were just four black and two Asian women, previously. This is not true progress.” nominees for best director at the Globes are all middle- According to the report, Warner Bros. released the aged men. most female-directed movies, but the figure is still stag- Guillermo del Toro is expected to win for “The Shape geringly low-just 12 in 11 years. Meanwhile, less than a of Water,” edging out Martin McDonagh (“Three fifth of the board members on the seven largest enter- Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”), Christopher tainment companies are female and male film executives Nolan, (“Dunkirk”), Ridley Scott (“All The Money in the outnumber the women by more than two to one. Two- World”) and Steven Spielberg (“The Post”). An analysis time Oscar nominee and gender equality activist Jessica of previous nominees by AFP shows that just five women Chastain points out that institutional sexism, far from have been selected to compete for best director in the being just a Hollywood problem, is the product of a patri- storied history of the Globes, which goes back to the ear- archal system which includes Wall Street and the media. ly 1940s. Barbra Streisand-the only female winner, for The 40-year-old Californian told AFP in a recent “Yentl” (1983) — and Bigelow were both nominated interview she became aware of discrimination in filmmak- twice, while Coppola, Jane Campion and Ava DuVernay ing even before her career got going, as she was studying complete the tiny list. at New York’s prestigious Juilliard School for the per- forming arts. “Very early on, I realized there was in each No change class about two-thirds men and one-third women, and I “Hollywood’s female director problem has been the asked a professor: ‘Why isn’t it 50/50?’” said the actress, source of much dialogue over the past several years,” who earned a Globes nod for best actress in a drama for Timothee Chalamet attends the 29th Annual said Stacy Smith, a professor at the University of “Molly’s Game.” “And he said, ‘Well, there are more parts Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. “The for men than women.’ But how are you going to change Gala at Palm Springs Convention Center in Palm evidence reveals that despite the increased attention, The Mayor of Beverly Hills Lili Bosse attends the 75th the place unless you change that thinking?”—AFP Springs, California. — AFP photos there has been no change for women behind the camera.” Annual Golden Globe Awards Preview Day. The 90-member HFPA declined to comment but